android-shortcuts

Shortcuts that lands you to an specific activity or fragment to perform a task from outside of an application.Long tap an app to see a list of shortcuts.

Availability

App Shortcuts are available from API Level 25 (Android 7.1) and above.

Limitation

Shortcuts are limited to 4 in number.

Types

We have 3 types of shortcuts available which we can use according to the condition or needs of an application

• Static Shortcuts✅
• Dynamic Shortcuts✅
• Pinned Shortcuts

Read more on the docs - https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/shortcuts/creating-shortcuts

Why I'm making this Repo ?

After searching the topics based Android Shortcuts,I didn't find a complete and clear solution according to my needs.And from reading most of them I'm making this one as a solution to the problem that most of the people face or talk about/ask for help in the forums which is "How can I go to Fragment using Shortcut ?" Well, fragments are attached to an activity.

So to solve this you will need an Activity (Must be in an IntentFilter with intent action MAIN android.intent.action.MAIN and category must be the LAUNCHER android.intent.category.LAUNCHER) i.e your LAUNCHER Activity.

Static Shortcuts

These are the shortcuts that are created only one time and are static in nature (cannot be changed).To make static shortcuts,you need to make a file in res/xml/shortcuts.xml and then link this file in your AndroidManiest.xml under your LAUNCHER Activity.There are more attributes and related things to static shortcuts,try to read the docs too.

   <!-- AndroidManifest.xml -->
   <activity
            android:name=".OnBoardingActivity"
            android:screenOrientation="portrait"
            android:theme="@style/AppTheme.NoTitleBar"
            tools:ignore="LockedOrientationActivity">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
     <!-- Here you have linked the static shortcuts.xml file -->
            <meta-data android:name="android.app.shortcuts"
                android:resource="@xml/shortcuts" />
        </activity>

Dynamic Shortcuts

Dynamic shortcuts are created when the app runs,it can perform the most recent task like calling or messaging and something unique like this.Due to dynamic in nature,dynamic shortcuts can be updated,deleted,disabled or even it can be removed easily you are fully responisbe for it,there's more you can find about dynamic shortcuts,try to read the docs too.To make dynamic shortcut do some change in the AndroidManiest.xml

   <!-- AndroidManifest.xml -->
<activity
            android:name=".OnBoardingActivity"
            android:screenOrientation="portrait"
            android:theme="@style/AppTheme.NoTitleBar"
            tools:ignore="LockedOrientationActivity">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>
           <activity
            android:name=".MainActivity"
            android:exported="true"
            android:screenOrientation="portrait"
            android:theme="@style/AppTheme.NoActionBar"
            tools:ignore="LockedOrientationActivity">
        </activity>

Note : The "exported" attribute describes whether or not someone else can be allowed to use it even that or other app or the Android System itself.In case of launcher activity its already true (incase if its false,then your app's activity won't launch)

Check app for static shortcuts and app-dynamic for dynamic shortcuts ⬆️

This guide can also be used for Kotlin based android apps.

If this helped you can rate me 🌟🌟
Regards.